Human interactions with fungi
More recently, mould fungi have been exploited to create a wide range of industrial products, including enzymes and drugs.
The fruiting bodies of some larger fungi are collected as edible mushrooms, including delicacies like the chanterelle, cep, and truffle, while a few species are cultivated.
Some fungi, especially the fly agaric and psilocybin mushrooms are used for the psychoactive drugs that they contain; these in particular are the focus of academic study in the field of ethnomycology.
Fungi create harm by spoiling food, destroying timber, and by causing diseases of crops, livestock, and humans.
Sometimes, as in the Great Irish Famine of 1845–1849, fungal diseases of plants, in this case potato blight caused by Phytophthora, result in large-scale human suffering.
Finally, fungi cause many diseases of humans and livestock; Aspergillosis kills some 600,000 people a year, mainly however those with already weakened immune systems.
Cultural universals in all human societies include expressive forms like art, music, dance, ritual, religion, and technologies like tool usage, cooking, shelter, and clothing.
[3] Fungi yield a wide variety of industrial enzymes including amylases, invertases, cellulases and hemicellulases, pectinases, proteases, laccases, phytases, alpha-glucuronidases, mannanases, and lipases.
[8] Mould fungi are the source of the meaty (umami) flavour of the soybean products tempeh, miso and soy sauce.
[15][16] Numerous anti-cancer drugs such as the mitotic inhibitors vinblastine, vincristine, podophyllotoxin, griseofulvin, aurantiamine, oxaline, and neoxaline are produced by fungi.
[20] The yeast species Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been an important model organism in modern cell biology for much of the twentieth century, and is one of the most thoroughly researched eukaryotic microorganisms.
[29] Entomopathogenic fungi infect and kill insects, including a variety of pest species, so they have been investigated as possible biological control agents.
A variety of Ascomycetes, including Beauveria, Lecanicillium, Metarhizium, and Paecilomyces have promising features for use as biological insecticides.
In the 1950s, the American banker Robert Gordon Wasson participated in a Mazatec psilocybin mushroom ritual, and wrote an influential but controversial book claiming that the Soma mentioned in the Rigveda was Amanita muscaria, the fly agaric.
[a][35][36][34] The mycologist John Ramsbottom however confirmed one element that Allegro later wove into his theory, stating in 1953 that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil fresco[b] in the Plaincourault Chapel depicted Amanita muscaria.
Poems and novels about or mentioning fungi have been written by Edmund Spenser, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Arthur Conan Doyle, D. H. Lawrence, and Emily Dickinson.
[44] More recently, artists such as Martin Belou, Helen Downie (alias "Unskilled Worker"), and Steffen Dam have created installations and paintings of mushrooms.
[55] Similarly, the 'Gros Michel' seedless banana crop was essentially completely destroyed worldwide in the 1950s by the wild fungus, Fusarium oxysporum.
Aspergillosis, most commonly caused by Aspergillus fumigatus, kills some 600,000 people per year, mostly those with already weakened immune systems.
[59] Candida yeasts are the agents of Candidiasis, causing infections of the mouth, throat, and genital tract, and more seriously of the blood.
